


Letters For Anna

by PurpleWarpaint



Category: An Imperial Affliction - Peter Van Houten, Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: Amsterdam, Gen, Letters, Sad, TFiOS, an imperial affliction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-28
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-06 19:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleWarpaint/pseuds/PurpleWarpaint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A loose interpretation of Anna and her mom and their relationship in AIA (as imagined by myself and my friend).<br/>Anna uses her wish to fly to Holland, in a bid to escape and be independent for the last time. She corresponds with her mom in letters...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wish

**Author's Note:**

> So this wasn't really meant to be a fic - My friend and I wrote this together as an English GCSE performance assignment.  
> Details were pretty sketchy, since the book doesn't even exist (dammit, John!), but we worked with what we had - Anna became a kind of mix of herself and Hazel (mostly Hazel, really)...  
> Expect many sad, mildly angsty, existential metaphors... :)  
> I hope you like it, and please leave feedback!

Make-a-Wish Foundation UK,

329-331 London Road,

Camberly.

GU15 3HQ

Twenty-First of April Two Thousand and Twelve

 

To Make-a-Wish,

 

          My name is Anna. I am 15. I was diagnosed with Leukaemia when I was eleven. Ever since then I’ve been saving my wish.

          I wanted to do something independent.

          Soon it will be too late for that.

 

          I’d like to go to Holland, as soon as possible. I want to be there when the tulips are out and the Elm trees are in blossom. It will be Holland as I’ve imagined it and it will be just for me.

 

          So I don’t want my mum to come. I don’t know if there’s red tape around these things, but I need to go on my own.

 

          If you need to contact my doctor, her number is 04822859127.

 

Yours Sincerely,

          Anna Green


	2. A Grenade

My Dear Anna,

 

            I know you’ll only just have boarded the plane, but I want to talk to you. Not to be a ‘Cancer Mum’, or to say how much I’ll miss you (though I do, already…). I just want to talk. You may not want this, but I do. You call yourself a grenade, with detonation inevitable, and you don’t want me to be caught up in the explosion. But I want you to remember that I’m your mum, not just a carer who gives you meds every day and tells you Not To Be Scared. Although now it seems to be the other way round - sometimes I feel I’m more scared than you.

 

            Mrs Lancaster is selling the post office. God knows, she’s had it for years – you used to run down there and get me the newspaper, do you remember? She blames it on the hip, but we all know full well that she just wants that nice place down the road: “Can’t even get the milk in by myself” she said the other day. Nonsense. She’s sprightly as ever, _and_ she’s got little Gus to help her. He’s looking after Sisyphus while you’re away. He loves that hamster, I tell you. They’re like soul mates – they _listen_ to one another… I remember when we bought Sisyphus from the pet store in the city. He was horribly fat, even then. You giggled at him (wheezing, half asleep in his wheel) and begged until I gave in. You’d squeeze him so hard I had to prise him off you as you drifted to sleep. I miss that… You drifting, no meds, no chemo or insane new treatments. No drip, no hospital gown. Just you, home, and sleeping soundly.

 

            Grenade, right… sorry. I shall forever hold my peace. But let me tell you this: I’ve chosen to be wounded. I’ve chosen to let myself be hurt. And I’m never going to throw you away.

 

            Love you forever,

                        Mum xxx 


	3. Side Effect

Dear Mum,

 

Forever is an incorrect concept, but up here it… doesn’t feel like that. I’ve always known how my life will end; I’ve always had a good idea of when. But outside this small, square aeroplane window, there _is_ no end of the line. People believe what they want to believe, but if that is the case then I can’t fathom how anyone ever believed the Earth was flat. Who would want to know that they will one day walk over the cliff edge. That somewhere there _is_ a full stop.

I’m irritating you, making you a cancer mum again. You’d rather know how I am, what I’ve been doing, if I’m enjoying myself. I haven’t done much yet, but I’ve been thinking a lot. You see, there were _so many people_ at the airport, and all so different. There was a loud group of Scotsmen catching the 8:32 to Glasgow queuing right behind an extended Asian family, who were panicking because one of them had lost their iPod. These are people who would have thought the other an alien back when in the days when the Earth was flat. Nobody else seemed to marvel at this.

But I digress. Biologically, I’m a side effect. A side effect of the relentless mutations that make the diversity of life on Earth possible. That make up the diversity of life in one small airport between 8:20 and 8:46 am. Please don’t make that fact into a positive thing, don’t assume that I feel glad that I’ve aided the evolutionary process of mankind. I’d rather just get better.

I know I’m getting close now; I can see tulip fields as the plane descends. They’re all planted in big, block stripes of beautiful bright colours (All perfect, no mutations.) There is a patch in the orange strip though, about the size of our kitchen table, where the flowers have been trampled. I can see faintly the green of stems and leaves.

You would love it here. Maybe your Dutch Tulip Man will take you one day, after I’m dead. You know why we didn’t make this trip together. I’m a bloody grenade.

I’ll post this when we land. I hope it reaches you soon.

 

With Love,

 Anna xxx


	4. Tulips

I like that you called him _my_ Dutch Tulip Man. And I’m sorry he can’t be yours, too. He says the fields are wonderful – infinite, regular oceans of colour, rippling in the breeze. Our garden’s a little too small for a whole ocean, but there’s always room for a few more. He bought some new bulbs home today. Natural beauties, perhaps, but I know better. Tulips are artificial; spliced and bred to create something even more beautiful. Very few are natural any more, they’ve become so mixed up and bred for display. These ones are the rejects from this season. Phenomena. _Side effects._ He tells me they’re orange, with veins of bright gold and yellow. They’ll remind me of your coat and the leaves from autumn. Tulips can do that. They can reflect something as fragile and personal as a memory through their colours. They will always make me think of you. 

 

You may be a side effect, but that makes you no less human than anyone else. It’s so easy to become your illness, to be entirely consumed so that you identify as nothing more than diseased. You should never forget that _you are not your cancer_. You are a person, a wonderful, wonderful human being who can be infuriating and hilarious and _broken_. Everyone is broken, really. If you tear away the emotional self that we show to the world, we are all just splintered, semi-functional, rusted out machines. Go and stand in the tulip fields, and see how the flowers are close up. No mutations? They are _all_ mutations, but beautiful nevertheless. If beauty can be engineered, I’m not sure I love it all that much. I’d rather see the raw insides, the part that changes not because we’ve removed and injected, but because of natural processes -the part inside us that is invariably worn down through merely living and striving to stay that way. For you, and so many others, that part is different. It’s already been damaged, before the natural weathering that shapes it over time. That’s what the cancer’s done, but it’s definitely not all there is to you. There’s the outside, the petals veined with gold. Your brave face.

 

At this point I should tell you to stay strong. But you always were, and I’ve never had to remind you. I should be you mother and say I want you home, so we can drink tea and talk properly. But you know what? We’ve used enough of your time. Go and stand in the tulip fields, and be alone. God knows, you need to be for once.

 I’m aware that, at this point, I’ve already failed miserably in fulfilling your wish to prevent any scars, so I’ll leave you with this: We don’t get to choose who we hurt in this world, but we do get some say as to who hurts us. I like my choices. And I hope you do too.   

 

Love,

            Mum xxx


	5. An Imperial Affliction

Mum,

I went to the Tulip Fields and it was _incredible_. Caroline, the nurse they sent with me, waited at the gate while I picked my way to the trampled patch in the orange stripe. I was careful not to stand on any tulips- I want to minimise the number of deaths I am responsible for.

I stood in that patch and I realised that although I’m trying not to cause a scar, I still want to do something while I’m here. Alive. And, as for that something, well I don’t want to follow the well-trodden path and try to cure cancer.

Instead, it will be The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer who Want to Cure Cholera.

I don’t want to be a shining example of strength, I don’t want to be another one who fought hard. It’s just a selfish need to Not Be Forgotten.

Perhaps I’ll travel to Nepal, build clean water wells, teach about hygiene and donate meds to the treatment units.

The only problem is that I’ve already used my Wish.

Love,

Anna xxx

* * *

**_p.s._** I like lying on the floor because I notice things that I usually wouldn’t. This morning I lay on the carpet with my headphones in and I noticed a torn-out page tucked down by the side of the bed. It had a poem on called An Imperial Affliction. It’s by Emily Dickinson and already I love it. Here, see what you think…

 

_There's a certain slant of light,_

_On winter afternoons_

_That oppresses, like the heft_

_Of cathedral tunes._

_Heavenly hurt it gives us;_

_We can find no scar,_

_But internal difference_

_Where the meanings, are._

_None may teach it anything,_

_'T is the seal, despair,_

_An imperial affliction_

_Sent us of the air._

_When it comes, the landscape listens,_

_Shadows hold their breath;_

_When it goes, 't is like the distance_

_On the look of death._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the poem is actually called "There's a certain slant of light" (well, actually it's not titled at all...), but we just thought we should link it to the book...


End file.
